Mistborn – The Well of Ascension

I’ve became really certain about that Brandon will not finish the last book so I’ll be content. His style is to dramatically different from Jordan that I’m absolutely certain that even if he tries to imitate his style this final book will be a book where most devoted fans will become a little annoyed and maybe even disappointed.

Don’t get me wrong, Brandon is a wonderful author. He is good but not that good. I’ve read a lots of books and many of you might have done the same and some of those who visits this blog consider fantasy to be a redundant retelling of the same concept. This IS mostly true for most fantasy book when the elements are so similar in many of the stories. But something that isn’t true is that all fantasy books are like this. And what makes the difference from a good (redundant) fantasy to a great fantasy is the writer’s ability to create and tell the story.

Many elements are the same in the books the world needs depth and it needs something new something exciting that we can’t really explain or just plainly relate to another book. Jordan have the One Power, this is magic yes, but it is not as most magic we’ve ever seen before him. It’s based on genders and opposites which is a concept that’s pretty new. The closets thing we have is the old tales of Witches and Warlocks but it’s never been as distinct as in Jordan’s books. He also has created a world that is based upon numerous of different advanced histories. Well, Brandon have tried to do exactly the same, as all the authors need to do to became a great book. He has his completely new power that isn’t even magical and he has some mystical unexplained and misunderstood other forces as well. So up to that point they’ve both succeeded even though Brandon’s world is a lot shallower than Jordan’s.

Then it’s the plot and the story, which shouldn’t be mistaken for the same thing. The plot is what the book is about what drives the story forward and the story is everything that happens in effect to that plot. If we begin with Jordan, his plot is about the usual thing that most people uses in their books, an independent doom of the world with two forces, often good and evil facing each other in an endless struggle. Brandon actually makes the same thing, but in steps, which is more logical steps for his world while Jordan builds up something like a climax within a climax or as he should have described it, a wheel. His story is based upon a much greater outdrawn event that isn’t as dark and gloomy as Mistborn. And here is where Brandon fails.

He creates these three stages for his story and plot making three plots. This is a great idea, no a brilliant idea, which would make his story so much better than Jordan’s when everything always twist to one side and another in the attempt to make something truly unique. Jordan however, he uses the elements that readers recognize to slowly build up momentum in his story and feed to his readers to give us understanding. Brandon on the other hand he makes a thing out of the fact that this is a doomed dark world and he wants to have the readers feel the despair and desperation of the characters, but he also makes it too obvious that he won’t turn the story for the obvious direction, he will twist it in the most unexpected ways to try to make a new story but at the same time stay within the logical frames of his work. This get’s out of hand. His story is good, great in some ways, but the way he makes it in is not.

His way of twisting the story, altering the characters in some way and introducing strange elements is what takes this story down to an above good but below great level. But it’s only one of the things that make me believe that he won’t do a good job with A Memory of Light. It’s his way of describing things and his vocabulary. This is possible to alter in some ways and with Harriet¹ editing it for him most of the words Jordan doesn’t use will be removed but he can’t ever write a sentence in the exact same manner as our dead author. This added to the sole fact that Jordan couldn’t possibly have left everything you need to really understand HIS world, behind makes me to believe that Brandon will most likely be able to finish the book but he will surely ruin some of it at the same time, unfortunately.

But I guess there is no way to actually escape the fact that one of the most promising authors I’ve ever have had the chance to read about has died without finishing his works. And I looked forward so much to read his prequels and the Infinity of Heaven. Well, well… even so I will believe that except for Terry Goodkind, Brandon might have been the best choice of author to at least try to deliver the end to us. I’m not sure if Terry Goodkind would do it better or worse than Brandon, but as I see it these three authors are probably the best there is in the fantasy genre at the moment.

As a final notice, I will actually praise Brandon… and myself. I think that we have a very similar ways of building up a story and by reading him I see that he thinks almost like I do when trying to create a story to a plot in a doomsday series. I do not know how much people think I can foresee things and I am certain that all my players both underestimate as well as overestimate my ability as game master of a story and a game. I cannot be sure of this though, but I will return to that subject in the posts that follows this one. All in all I say that Brandon have given me a lot of ideas, which is mainly my only reason for reading new works right now when I’m in the phase I’m currently at – creating rather than wasting time with something enjoyable.

Well that’s it about Mistborn and I say that I must read the last book. That’s something at least that Brandon managed which my god of fantasy did not, he finished his series and didn’t leave me without a proper ending. In the end of this book they revealed what the next phase of the plot is and I am interested in reading it and see if my assumptions are correct this time too. About 250 pages in this book I made some assumptions about the end and all of them except for about two or three of originally ten to twelve proved to be true. Well, well I still recommend this book, but I will not agree with anyone that thinks that Brandon is better than Jordan in any way and that is my objective as well as subjective opinions. I could, though, gladly discuss it if someone begs to differ.

Best regards,
Herid Fel

PS: I placed this post here, because it was this day, at around 01:10 i finished it. :DS

1. Jordan’s wife ↩